This is an interesting article, and is a good supplement to the recent New Yorker article about Neanderthal hominins.[1] I think the best point made in the arti

This is an interesting article, and is a good supplement to the recent New Yorker article about Neanderthal hominins.[1] I think the best point made in the article comes part way down with the expert quotation, "'It’s a great time to be researching Neanderthals because we’re learning so quickly,' said Steven Churchill, a professor of evolutionary anthropology at Duke University. 'But it’s a horrible time to write a book,' he added with a laugh. New information is arriving at such a fast pace that it’s difficult for even scholars to keep up." That's about right. The article kindly submitted here does a good job of reviewing some of the back-and-forth about how Homo sapiens has thought about Neanderthal fossils and what archaeology suggests about our near cousins over the years, with a variety of different ideas about Neanderthals coming and going. The latest word is that Neanderthals were smarter than we used to think.[2] Of course the article mentions that there are traces of gene assemblages that were first found in ancient Neanderthal DNA that are actually fairly commonplace in living human beings (which is the main point of the New Yorker article). So in that sense, the Neanderthals are not so much "lost cousins" as common ancestors among other ancestors of our brothers and sisters. Neanderthal genes live on in you and me, more than likely. [1] http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/neanderthals http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/neanderthals [2] http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/research-finds-neanderthals-were-more-thoughtful-than-we-once-imagined/2015/01/19/c848f040-71ac-11e4-ad12-3734c461eab6_story.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/resear...